HIV-Positive Workers Continue to Face Workplace Discrimination
More than 1 million people currently live with HIV in the United States. These are people who are living normal lives, and as the drugs that are being developed to treat the disease improve, HIV-positive people are expected to live longer, more productive and satisfying lives,. However, there’s one thing that has changed little since the word ”AIDS” entered our lexicon. Workplace discrimination is something that many persons with HIV continue to face on a daily basis.
The laws have become progressively tougher on any kind of harassment or discrimination against persons with HIV. Recently, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against a company on behalf of an HIV-positive man. According to the complaint, the company refused to hire the man because of his HIV status. Over the past ten years, in fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed at least 25 cases involving alleged discrimination based on HIV status. Between 1997 and 2013, the federal agency received more than 3,900 complaints that alleged that people were being discriminated against based on their HIV status.
In most of these cases, these persons were simply terminated from their jobs after employers learned about their HIV-positive status. In fact, most lawsuits filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have to do with this kind of discrimination. In other cases, the company simply refused to hire persons due to their HIV-positive status.
It isn’t just small companies that are guilty of such discrimination. Some of the defendants in HIV-positive discrimination lawsuits include the likes of Popeye’s Chicken, a Mac Donald’s franchise and even Kaiser Permanente. People have been fired from jobs as dental technicians, chefs, or even taking care of the produce section in their supermarket, after employers learned about their HIV status.
